Monday, February 25, 2013

GEORGE Osborne has been labelled as the "downgraded Chancellor" and accused of being in "complete denial" over the loss of the UK's prized AAA credit rating.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls yesterday claimed his opposite number was "just making it up as he goes along" and piled on the humiliation by reciting the Government's own words on the importance of the rating.

He told the Mr Osborne to get "out of denial" and come up with a new plan for jobs and growth.

In the wake of continued riots in the West Bank, the United States on Wednesday urged both the Palestinians and the Israelis not only to "refrain from provocative actions," but also to consider "positive steps to reestablish trust and deescalate the current tensions."

Deputy State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said: "We call on Israelis and Palestinians to exercise maximum restraint as the situation on the West Bank remains tense."

Following the autopsy of Palestinian detainee Arafat Jaradat, Ventrall said the US "expect[s] all parties to consider the results of the autopsy calmly and without inflammatory rhetoric."

Thousands of dead fish were found floating in the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland and lining the river banks, officials said.

"I've seen large clumps of them floating down the river for the last three days," T.J. Towner, who works in the area of the city known as The Flats, said in a (Cleveland) Plain Dealer report Monday.

The cause of the fish kill -- with many of the fish showing red bruise-like marks -- was not immediately known, but Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District spokeswoman Jean Chapman said kills of Gizzard Shad are common this time of year.

The Odisha government has alerted all its district authorities after a swab sample collected from a migratory bird tested positive for bird flu, an official said here Saturday.

The samples of some migratory birds in Chilika Lake were sent to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal Jan 20 after they were found having flu-like symptoms, said Satyabrata Sahu, state secretary of the fishery and animal resources department.

The veterinary staffs of all the districts have been ordered to monitor health of all the birds after swab from one bird tested positive. The test report reached Friday, Sahu said.

Rescuers have been trying to save around 50 pilot whales which beached themselves off Chile.

Fishermen spotted the pod of short-finned whales stranded on a beach in southern Chile's Strait of Magellan on Sunday, 65 miles south of Punta Arenas.

Fisherman Jorge Carcamo said: "Around four in the afternoon we were getting closer to our port and you could see the [beached] whales from the boat. You could see two at first and then when we got closer, sadly, we counted 46 or more."

This is too strange, I have to share it. Currently across the Los Angeles area, there is a widespread outbreak of TB; thousands of people may have been exposed to it in a deadly downtown LA outbreak. Coincidentally, or not, a woman was recently found dead in a water tank in a hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. Her name? Elisa Lam. The name of the test for TB? Lam Elisa. Is this some kind of 'test' run for a water borne 'false flag' across America? The first line of the linked CBS LA story alone should give us pause:

"The feds are descending on downtown Los Angeles to combat a dangerous outbreak of a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis."

I've added a mysterious video below of one of the last times Elisa Lam was seen alive, pushing buttoons in an elevator and ducking in and out, looking into the hallway. Check that one out, the 2nd video below. That video alone is bizarre enough to give anyone concern.

His plan also includes tougher federal laws against gun trafficking and straw purchases, which occur when a person legally buys a firearm but sells it to a criminal or someone else barred from owning a weapon.

Interest in the gun issue has intensified since the December shootings in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first-graders and six staffers at an elementary school. The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee plans to write legislation addressing some of Obama’s proposals in the next week or two.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd criticized Monday the new fundraising efforts of President Obama’s dark money group, Organizing for Action, calling a scheme for high donors to meet regularly with Obama “the definition of selling access.”

Todd was describing the quarterly meetings that will be enjoyed by OFA’s $500,000 donors, the New York Times reported over the weekend:

But those contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.

Police have lost track of almost 140 paedophiles, sparking fears many may have left the country, it has been revealed.

Government figures show a total of 137 child sex offenders have disappeared after signing the sex offenders' register, which requires them to inform police of their whereabouts or any changes to their details.

The shock figures show the Metropolitan Police has lost by far the most paedophiles, with 40 on the run from the authorities in London.

Masked Palestinian gunmen fired in the air on Monday as thousands marched at the West Bank funeral of a prisoner whose death in an Israeli jail has raised fears in Israel of a new uprising.

Arafat Jaradat's death on Saturday and a hunger strike by four other Palestinian inmates have raised tension in the occupied territory after repeated clashes between stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers in recent days.

Israeli troops, on high alert, took up positions outside Jaradat's home village of Se'eer, in likely earshot of the bursts of automatic fire from the half-dozen masked Palestinians in full battle dress.

Projections from an early vote count in Italy's election on Monday showed Silvio Berlusconi's center right slightly ahead in the Senate, a result that could cause deep government instability if confirmed.

The projections on RAI, Sky, Mediaset and LA 7 television stations were the reverse of earlier predictions from telephone polls that showed the center left taking a strong lead in both houses of parliament.

The change in predictions had an immediate impact on markets which rose earlier on hopes of a stable and strong centre-left led government.

A meteor blast over Russia is putting new focus on a transatlantic effort to crash a spacecraft into a far-flung asteroid in a bid to prove that incoming objects from space can be knocked from their path.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory are preparing a decade-long, $350 million project to propel a rocket into the asteroid Didymos as it passes close to Earth. If successful, it would be the first time an asteroid is knocked off course by human intervention.

A new campaign, aimed at persuading countries to ban the building and use of so-called 'killer robots', is gaining momentum after winning the support of academics, pressure groups and Nobel Prize winners.

The organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) first mooted the campaign back in November when they warned that soon: "fully autonomous weapons, also known as "killer robots," would be able to select and engage targets without human intervention."

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee track star charged with the murder of his girlfriend, is considering asking the court to eases bail conditions that include reporting to police twice a week, his lawyer Kenny Oldwage said.

The athlete, known as the “Blade Runner” because of his prosthetic running blades, is due to report to a police station in Pretoria for the first time today after being released from custody on Feb. 22. Pistorius, 26, will resume training, though he won’t take part in competitions, coach Ampie Louw, told reporters earlier that day.

“He just really wants to get on with his life,” Oldwage said by phone today.

Ahead of annual, routine military exercises between South Korea and the United States, North Korea issued its usual caustic objections Saturday.

It threatened "miserable destruction," if "your side ignites a war of aggression by staging the reckless joint military exercises ... at this dangerous time."

Though customary, the stark posturing by North Korea stands in the shadow of an underground nuclear test two weeks ago that was preceded by the launch of a long-range missile capable of transporting a warhead.

Polls in Italy opened for the second and final day of voting on Monday, with a surge in protest votes increasing fears of an unclear outcome that could hamper economic reforms.

"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old lawyer from Rome who said he had voted for the 5-Star Movement, an anti-establishment group set to make a huge impact at this, its first general election.

"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited."

President Obama’s former press secretary said today that he was specifically instructed by the White House not to acknowledge the administration’s use of drones.

Speaking Sunday on MSNBC’s ‘Up w/Chris Hayes’ Sunday, Robert Gibbs said that he was told when he was named White House Press Secretary that ‘one of the first things they told me was, “You’re not even to acknowledge the drone program.

‘”You’re not even to discuss that it exists,”’ the former press secretary and current MSNBC political analyst said.

Officials now say there is no evidence the world's most powerful drug baron Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was killed in a February 21 shootout in the Guatemalan jungle.

Earlier reports claimed 'El Chapo' died in a hail of bullets February 21 in a jungle shootout with a rival gang near the Mexican border.

Last week, villagers in the Peten province near the border with Mexico, claimed they spotted a blood-soaked body that resembled the fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader slumped in a car after after a clash between two heavily-armed drugs gangs.

A crazed man hacked his wife in the head with a meat cleaver as he dragged her down Canal Street (main image, showing wife in pink top) as firefighters who saw what was happening leapt in to her rescue and pinned the husband down (inset picture). The woman fled from the scene, but was eventually taken to New York's Bellevue hospital where she is expected to make and full recovery from lacerations to her face, hip, and back.A crazed man hacked his wife in the head with a meat cleaver as he dragged her down Canal Street (main image, showing wife in pink top) as firefighters who saw what was happening leapt in to her rescue and pinned the husband down (inset picture). The woman fled from the scene, but was eventually taken to New York's Bellevue hospital where she is expected to make and full recovery from lacerations to her face, hip, and back.